I was sent a review set of the Australian release of Series One of
'Bewitched' -- here in Australia we're being offered only the
colourised version.
My natural preference would be for the original black-and-white
version. But on viewing, I can say that the colourisation is a lot
better than some other efforts I've seen -- a bit too brightly coloured
at times, but dropping colour levels to about half normal produces a
very viewable result.
I know tonal values are different, but if colour is dropped altogether,
the resulting black-and-white pic seems to offer good contrast levels
and seems a pretty fair approximation of the original black-and-white.
I'd rather have the real thing though........

i only ever remember seeing color version on Tv so which season did they
actually introduce the color episodes?

"anthony" <anthonyjhcnospam@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:1118970143.376801.141660@g49g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...

Season 3.

-- jayembee

Season 4, season 3 was the last B and W season

jayembeeNoSpam@snurcher.com wrote:

And then they started to remake the B&W episodes...

"Mike" <miker@rochester.rr.com> wrote in message
news:42B39BDF.5BE80A89@rochester.rr.com...

"anthony" <anthonyjhcnospam@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:1118970143.376801.141660@g49g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...
GIVE ME A BREAK!!!!!!!!

The reason the original early season episodes of this series
and just about anything made for television around that time
were in B&W was because the producers couldn't see the
need to do it any other way. Colour (color?) transmission
in the US was a few years away and of course no-one had
any conception of the way TV shows may come to be
considered cult icons with seemingly endless repeats and the
concepts of home (tape) video and ultimately DVD were
WAY into the future.

In 2005 Woody Allen or Spielberg or Joe Newby may make
the 'artistic' choice to make a movie in B&W but I'd be sure
the choice for the filming style of a weekly sitcom in the early
1960's was 99% financially driven, i.e. colour was an
unnecessary expense.

So the way I look at it is if they can do a good job with the
colorisation, and I think these days it is more than acceptable,
just watch it (in colour), enjoy and forget about the colour
issue.

Having risked running the gauntlet of a flame war I want to
add that I have a different attitude to the film world,
especially toward what are generally regarded as classic
movies.

Indeed, Orson Welles famously stated, "Keep Ted Turner
and his goddamned Crayolas (colorisation) away from my
movie (Citizen Kane)." This, of course, ultimately represents
an artistic decision by the director.

In regard to a film like Casablanca while I would think cost
was probably the main factor for its B&W it is arguably a
better film because of it. So, I think there is a far greater
argument that can be had about the application of
colorisation in movies.

Let the debate rage on.

muzhed

In article <42b41654$1_1@news.iprimus.com.au>, Scott Baker
<felixunger@iprimus.com.au> wrote:

enough and run out of ideas.

--
Chris Mack "Refugee, total shit. That's how I've always seen us.
'Invid Fan' Not a help, you'll admit, to agreement between us."
-'Deal/No Deal', CHESS

muzhed (muzhed@NOSPAM.com) wrote in alt.video.dvd:
That's wrong.

There were several color broadcasts of "real" programs in the US in 1955
and they used the same standard that analog color broadcasts in the US use
today. I know there were experiments before that using both NTSC and
other standards.

By the time "Bewitched" started in 1964, there had already been major
real series television broadcasts in color:

Sep 12, 1959 "Bonanza," TV's first full-hour Western color film series began
Jan 20, 1961 Inaugural Parade of President John F. Kennedy is presented in
color
Sep 24, 1961 Premiere of "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color," full-hour
Sunday series of color TV programs ranging from nature stories
to animated cartoons, from tales of adventure to famous
classics and musical extravaganzas.
Fall, 1962 ABC began the colorcasting of filmed cartoon shows "The
Flintstones" and "The Jetsons".

--
Jeff Rife |
| http://www.nabs.net/Cartoons/RhymesW...adyForADog.jpg

"Jeff Rife" <wevsr@nabs.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.1d1e7de8a2dc8e46989de5@news.nabs.net...
While my grasp of the history US TV transmission I might not be
as detailed as yours if I had put the words 'Full time' in front of
"Colour (color?) transmission the US was a few years away"
the point would have been better made. I think this quote I found
in an article about the history of colour TV in the US sums it up:
"But it was not until 1966 that NBC became the first network to
show the color we all now take for granted on all of its programs."

So my basic argument that the producers of Bewitched and other
similar programs thought filming in colour was an unnecessary
expense remains the same.

muzhed

muzhed (muzhed@NOSPAM.com) wrote in alt.video.dvd:
That's as may be, but the reason wasn't because it wasn't already happening
for other series. "Bonanza" had been showing in color for five years, and
ABC (the network that showed "Bewitched") had several programs in color
already.

The same thing is happening today. Short-sighted producers are still filming
in formats that aren't HD-friendly (in particular, editing on videotape at
SD resolution), but the more intelligent ones are filming in HD even if
their shows don't currently air in HD.

--
Jeff Rife | "Ho! Ha, ha! Guard! Turn! Parry!
| Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!"
|
| -- Daffy Duck, "Robin Hood Daffy"

In article <MPG.1d1ed67670409ea0989de8@news.nabs.net>, Jeff Rife
<wevsr@nabs.net> wrote:

I'm sure budget has something to do with it, and if they feel the shows
would last. Why bother if it won't bring in extra money down the line?

--
Chris Mack "Refugee, total shit. That's how I've always seen us.
'Invid Fan' Not a help, you'll admit, to agreement between us."
-'Deal/No Deal', CHESS

"muzhed" <muzhed@NOSPAM.com> wrote in message
news:PJWse.1423$i8.13564@nnrp1.ozemail.com.au...
I have on DVD colour video of an American TV show from 1965,
the tapes were mostly wiped and only 3 colour episodes remain
of Hullabaloo. The decision in 1966 was to go 'all' colour.
I prefer the original black and white, preferring to see a show as it
was originally shown, no 'improvements' are possible, just no cuts.
If I did get Bewitched I would buy it from overseas.

ig

In article <P17te.1501$i8.16979@nnrp1.ozemail.com.au>,
muzhed <muzhed@NOSPAM.com> wrote:
The problem with so many article written about past events, is the
authors often weren't there and get their info from someone else -
who often wasn't always there - and thus get it wrong.

I saw my first NBC colorcast when the broadcast/journalism students
made a field trip from U of Idaho, Washington State College [now
WSU] to Easter Washington College of Education in Cheney - as it
was closer to the KHQ TV transmitter in Spokane.

We had lectures on how color worked, and an engineer had set up the
TV set - it may have been one of the original 15" round RCA color
tube units - but memory says it was a bit larger than that.

To show us how to set it the engineer mis-addusted the set and then
turned the settings so the red squares were on top of the others.
Then he left.

And when the colorcast started - NBC would show color on one major
program every Sunday. The reds were diplaced by one unit on the
original setup. The program was The Desert Song - and in close ups
the red of the singers mouth was about one-mouth away from the real
mouth. I still remember one of the commercials - adapated to the
Desert Song theme. There was dune and suddenly 3 or 4 Oldsmobiles
in parallel came hurtling over the top of one.

That was with in the fall of 1956 or the fall of 1957. So your
commnent about NBC, color and 1966 was almost exactly 10 years off.

Before the '50s were over NBC had a daily color program - that ran
at noon [Pacific time] - and was a live drama. It was done during
the day so that stores could demo color. There was always a major
program in color on Sunday, and during the nights there were
occaisionaly color programs. And the cameras were HUGE. There
were as wide as three of the normal tube-type cameras - as they
were essentially three mono-chrome cameras operating in parallel
after the image had been split by dichroic filters.

On some B/W sets of the day you could tell when the original
program was in color as the picture could be seen as being made up
of dots instead of lines.

As color adavanced many places started filming in color thinking of
the future and being able to take advantage of the medium's future.

I'd suggest going to a library and looking for archives of
Broadcasting Magazine. I think it was orignaly Radio Broadcasting,
became Radio/TV broadcasting, the TV/Radio Broadcasting, and the
just Broadcasting. You'll get more accurate information by going
to the sources than authors who often stumble with historical
items, relying far too often on word-of-mouth which is often wrong.

I can't give you any exact dates as I have exactly one copy of
Broadcasting and that dates to the 1960s'. But as students that
was one magazine we always read in our progress toward a
broadcasting degree.

Bill

--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

In article <190620050351103613%invid@localnet.com>,
Invid Fan <invid@localnet.com> wrote:
'Filming' in HD is not like 'filming' in the '50s and 60's where
they used real film. The early video recorders weren't that great
- but better than kinescopes.

But going to tape for HD isn't that much more expensive than
using real color film over b/w. That was a major cost.

And anymore you don't have to worry if the shows will last - as
there are so many cable/satellite channels there is not enough
programming to fill them. You can syndicate almost anything that
was worth running the first time - even if they didn't make it to a
full season.

Bill

--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

By 1966, all three of the major networks were producing virtually every
program in color, but the big push really did begin around 1960--when NBC
began broadcasting quite a few of its primetime programs in color. Unlike
earlier efforts, this time the change was permanent, and onlly grew bigger
with each passing season.

By the mid 60s, NBC was promoting itself as "The Full Color Network." ABC
was second in terms of colorcasting by that time, with CBS being the
holdout. CBS' entire primetime schedule remained in black/white until either
1965 or 1966--possibly because CBS had pioneered a competing, non-compatible
color system in the early 50s, which was initially adopted but later
rejected by the FCC. The FCC chose, instead, to eventually give the nod to
the NTSC compatible color system that remains in use to this day, which was
pioneered by RCA/NBC. In 1962, someone complained to the TV Guide editor
that, "Color TV is here to stay, but CBS probably wishes it would go away."

Lucille Ball recognized the importance of color, perhaps eyeing the
syndication market, and "The Lucy Show" was filmed in color beginning with
its second season, even though the telecasts were only shown in black/white
over CBS for the next two or three seasons.

I think you're right about economics being the reason behind the early
black/white episodes of shows such as "Bewitched." Personally, those early
black and white episodes are my favorite episodes. The writing was
marvelous, and the lack of color doesn't bother me in the least.

In article <1Aete.35055$rb6.4777@lakeread07>, Bob <w@hm.com>
wrote:

.....

The Korean war kept the CBS color-wheel system from being the one
we use today.

RCA's NTSC wasn't a good as the CBS version when the the FCC
approved the CBS version.

The Korean war meant there was a moratorium on issuing contruction
permits for new TV stations so very few stations ever transmitted
the CBS version. On some sets the CBS version just gave a
scrambled picture, on others it gave 4 smaller pictures on the
screen, but overall it was incompatible.

During the moratorium RCA 'perfected' [and many agree it's far from
perrect] their NTSC. So it was easy for the FCC to approve a
system that was compatible with B/W rather than have viewers
replace all their B/W receivers or get convertors to handle
the CBS system since there were so few receivers and transmitters
installed.

Some of the protype pictures I remember were truly bizarre. Since
the wheel had to be spun in front of the screen it had to over
twice the width of the screen and as the wheel got larger the edges
of the wheel moved pretty fast. I saw one photo of a proto-type
that helped overcome this by putting the set inside a rotating
drum.

One of the more ingenious methods for having large screnn 3'x4'
color TV in your home in 1960 was an article in one of the hobbiest
electronic magazine that fascinatted me.

It involved by the guts of the discontinue Philips projection
system that used [from memory] a 1" [or maybe it was 3"] tube and
was in a cabinet that projected upwards.

The guts were available for $99 each. The design were for coffee
table units to give you a 3'x4' projection unit.

There were two approaches. One converted the NTSC signals to
field sequential and you built a rotating disc to go in front
of the Philips tube to view NTSC as a field-sequential
transmission.

The other approach was to put three of these devices into the
coffee table, and split the color signal into 3 pieces and feed
each to one of the units. I can imagine convergance could be a
pain.

It was probably about 10 years after these article that the first
prouection units came out - with very expensive tube/lens
combinations - as the 21" color sets were still about $1000 then.

Things surely have changed since the days of John Logie Baird and
his early work.

Bill

--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

Thank you for this posting, most of which I've clipped for brevity. The CBS
system was introduced just a few years before I was born, so my earliest
memories are of NTSC colorcasting.

Many years back, I used to enjoy going to the public library and browsing
magazines from the 40s/50s. One day I ran across an issue (possibly "Life,"
I'm not completely certain) that published a couple of still photos that
were taken from a screen of a television receiver that was designed to work
with the CBS mechanical wheel color system. The color/clarity in those still
photos was absolutely astounding, and it indeed was far superior to anything
that RCA's NTSC system would have been capable of at the time.

I'm happy we never had to live with a television receiver that contained a
whirring disc (the earliest B/W sets in our household broke down with
alarming frequency anyway), but CBS had a winner in terms of image quality,
judging from those photos.

In article <1Aete.35055$rb6.4777@lakeread07>, Bob <w@hm.com> wrote:

first season of Star Trek wasn't highly rated on it's own, it was one
of the highest rated color programs that year ('66). If everything was
in color at that point, the two ratings lists would have been almost
the same.

--
Chris Mack "Refugee, total shit. That's how I've always seen us.
'Invid Fan' Not a help, you'll admit, to agreement between us."
-'Deal/No Deal', CHESS

On Sun, 19 Jun 2005 11:35:01 -0400, "Bob" <w@hm.com> wrote:

The CBS system used sequential scans of each colour. The first colour
picture tubes were in development in 1951, these used one gun
"dithered" though a magnetically-controlled mask to strike one of
three rows of colour pixels. Under consideration was a method of
charging then discharging special long-persistence phosphors so as to
display all three colours at once for a very low flicker, pleasant,
full-colour display. While based on radar technology already in use
this would still have been a very expensive technology just for
"premium" units, so the mass-market sets would have had cheaper
non-storage picture tubes with sequential scans of each colour on each
phosphor. By 1953 the shadow mask tube would have been coming to
market, (as they did for the NTSC service.) In the late 1950s a form
of static bubble memory was being developed which would have been able
to dynamically store one scan of one colour, the output of two memory
stores could thus be matrixed with the third live scan to provide a
non-sequential colour picture. All this is to build up to the fact
that the colour wheel was only a short-term solution to the CBS
Sequential SANS memory system. The Secam system was developed when it
had become practical for all home sets to cheaply store at least one
LINE of colour (nowhere near the full field needed for the CBS method)
and thus Secam was designed with the short-term memoery as part of the
standard.

... Steve ..

Not to mention that TV shows were being shot in color as far back
as 1950. THE CISCO KID, a syndicated series of that time was shot
in color, even though it was broadcast only in B&W for years
afterward.

-- jayembee